Type-length-value (TLV) elements, e.g., attribute-value pair or information elements (IEs), include data constructs usable for providing information (e.g., attributes) in protocol packets or other messages. For example, a TLV element may include an identifier indicating a type or kind of information contained therein, a length of the information contained therein, and the value or information contained therein. Various communications protocols and/or data representation schemes (e.g., extensible markup language (XML)) may use TLV elements for exchanging and/or storing information. For example, Diameter and remote authentication dial in user service (RADIUS) are authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) protocols and use TLV elements to provide information in various messages.
Some network functions or related nodes may be configured to process (e.g., encode, decode, and/or other actions) messages containing TLV elements. For example, a Diameter routing agent (DRA) may be configured to decode an ingress message containing TLV elements, modify the TLV elements, add TLV elements, remove TLV elements, encode an egress message containing the modified TLV elements and/or the additional TLV elements, and send the egress message to a destination.
Some networks utilize a network architecture involving separating various aspects, services, or functionality of a network function into services or related components. For example, a distributed network function (DNF) (e.g., a virtualized and/or distributed node) may include one or more DNF components or instances thereof that can execute on distributed resources in a cloud computing infrastructure, a virtualized infrastructure, or other networked infrastructure. In this example, each DNF component or instances thereof may include relevant software and/or processes for performing some functionality and may be loosely coupled and/or individually scalable.
While distributed architectures allows network operators and/or service providers to deploy flexible, scalable, and feature-customized network functions, various issues can arise for such architectures when decode/encode functionality is duplicated in multiple DNF components and/or instances thereof. For example, a virtualized or distributed DRA can yield inefficient utilization of compute and input/output (I/O) resources if services and/or features are duplicated in multiple DNF components and instances thereof. Further, inefficient utilization of resources can be exacerbated when DNF components exchange messages containing large payloads during operation.